With the rise of Internet in China and the development of Chinese economy, Chinese men are becoming more confident and the cultural divide between them and Western women is narrowing. Photo: IC

Today is November 11, China's Singles' Day. Whether it is a day to celebrate or lament, this "anti-Valentine's Day" is a day on which people consider relationships, and whether they need a relationship to be happy.

Foreigners in Beijing often find themselves reflecting on the inter-cultural couples that form in the capital.

While the stereotype often has a Chinese woman with a foreign man, the recent figures show that this isn't always the case.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Civil Affairs announced that the number of international marriages in Beijing increased from 700 to 800 couples annually in the 1990s to about 1,200 couples annually in recent years, the Beijing Morning Post reported in September this year. According to the report, it is not less common for Chinese men to marry foreign women than the reverse.

For this issue, Metropolitan sat down with some foreign women to see their opinions on the merits of Chinese men.

Gaining popularity overseas

According to the National Population and Family Planning Commission, China has been dealing with an unbalanced male to female ratio since the 1980s. In 2012 the disparity in male-to-female births reached 117.7 boys for every 100 girls.

But China is not the only country with gender imbalances. A Xinhua news report said that Chinese men are finding favor in Russia, partly because the male to female ratio there is 100:114.7, and claimed that Russian men are more prone to excessive drinking, making Chinese men a popular alternative.

Another Xinhua news report said that  Chinese men in Tanzania are popular among local women.

A woman in Tanzania told Xinhua that they like Chinese men "because they work very diligently and are loyal to love."

Relationships between Chinese men and foreign women are generally perceived to be less common than those between foreign men and Chinese women, but in recent years they have become much more common. Photo: IC

Direct approach

Tanya Beidzina, 25, from Belarus, told Metropolitan that she prefers Chinese men when seeking a relationship. Beidzina had a brief relationship with a Chinese man back in 2012 when she was studying at the Dalian University of Technology, Liaoning Province. According to Beidzina, he was the only boyfriend she has had.

Beidzina said that she liked the fact that he always took the initiative to pursue her.

"He didn't need me to come to him and he would always find me. In Belarus, there are so many beautiful women and there are fewer men compared to women. So women need to pursue men while men don't appreciate women enough," said Beidzina.

She added that because China has more men than women, they need to be more forward in their approaches to women, and women have more choices.

Beidzina said that unlike foreign men who are accustomed to splitting the bill, Chinese men are more hospitable and are willing to pay for women.

"In my country, men just buy you a coffee and want to take you home. In China, a man can buy you a meal and doesn't ask for anything," Beidzina said.

Author and journalist Jemimah Steinfeld comes from England, and is working on her next book, Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China, which will be published next February. She noted that Chinese men often have a higher level of intensity, especially in the early phases of relationships, when compared to Western men.

"Chinese men wear their hearts on their sleeves, while Western men are more aloof, at least early on," said Steinfeld.

Steinfeld once dated a Chinese boyfriend for a few weeks. "He called me all the time, on a daily basis. A Western man, by comparison, might text once or twice a week," she said.

"I appreciated the sincerity of the Chinese man I dated and it was refreshing that he did not play games. At the same time, it was also very full-on and overbearing."

Family matters

In August an online post including photographs went viral online, with the heading, "Female hotties, male perverts," which showed a number of couples made up of good-looking women and ugly-looking men.

The post, viewed by millions of online users, generated heated discussion on whether Chinese men do not deserve Chinese women.

Many Chinese women voiced their discontent toward Chinese men's appearance. But in Steinfeld's opinion, this view of beauty is in many ways shaped by Western values.

According to Steinfeld, the Western ideal says the women should be slim, of medium height, and have other features considered conventionally attractive.

Meanwhile, men should be tall and slim, but with muscles.

"However, I don't believe in this idea. As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have met many attractive Chinese men and many unattractive Western men - I try not to have my opinions molded by a very Western, narrow definition of what it is to be attractive," said Steinfeld.

Beidzina told Metropolitan that she does not consider men's figures important. "Men with six packs are not appealing to me."

Beidzina said that the Chinese traditional emphasis on piety and family values on the one hand makes her feel frustrated, because Chinese men often like to talk about their parents. But on the other hand, she said she thinks the high value placed on family makes Chinese men more responsible in this regard.

"A Western man will say goodbye to his wife if the love has faded. While a Chinese man won't just run away if he has a family," she said. "In a relationship, drifting apart is normal. But there should be something more important than passion."

Western values?

Andreea Hriscu, 29, is an architect from Romania who works in Beijing. Hriscu's new Chinese boyfriend is a concept designer for games.

According to Hriscu, traditional Chinese men are boring in foreigners' eyes: they study hard, work hard, get married, and follow what their parents say. But she said the more "Westernized" Chinese men are more attractive and open-minded.

"These ones [Chinese men] that aren't traditional don't care about these things and they just follow their own paths with their own risks, including confronting their parents who push them to do what they [the parents] want," she said.

"My boyfriend is very open-minded, with his own path in life. He's not so influenced by tradition."

When Steinfeld visited China back in 2006, she rarely saw Western women with Chinese men, but she said this is changing. "The trend will increase in the future."

Steinfeld noted that with the rise of the Internet in China, Chinese men share more in common with Western women, in terms of cultural reference points, career paths and life options.

"And as China becomes a wealthier nation, Chinese men are becoming more confident. Western women are no longer placed on a pedestal in the way they might have been 10 years ago. I think with that shift in dynamic comes a whole shift in sexual politics," said Steinfeld.

Women's equality still lagging

Zhao Sile, a women's rights activist and editor of the Media Monitor for Women Network, said that demand for Chinese men as spouses is still limited to African countries and Russia, because compared with those countries, gender equality is better in China.

"This doesn't mean Chinese men don't have things they need to work on. Many Chinese men are still trapped by the traditional Chinese culture and values and their perceived role as breadwinner in the family gives them a sense of superiority to women to some extent," Zhao said.

"We still need to be more open to advancing the culture and the development of gender equality in China," she said.

Beidzina, who went back to Belarus after studying in China, said she is planning to return.

"I still want to find a Chinese man in the future," Beidzina said.